Elon Musk is one of those ambitious entrepreneurs who is always vocal about his ventures in public forums. This time he came up with an estimate of what it takes to build the first sustainable city on Mars.
CEO Musk was speaking at an Air Force Pitch Day event in San Francisco. The U.S. military offers investment to those startups that could advance military technology.
The talk and question session during the event resulted in further discussion on Twitter. So where did it start from?
The City on Mars
The main discussion started with the claim that each SpaceX Starship would cost only about $2 million. According to Musk, “the economics have to be something like that to build a self-sustaining city on Mars.”
Musk said that in order to make that city a reality, SpaceX will have to build about 1,000 Starships.
Each of these ships will have transport cargo, infrastructure, and crew to Mars. He said it would take about 20 years to finish the process because only one flight every two years is possible.
“A thousand ships will be needed to create a sustainable Mars city… As the planets align only once every two years.”
And how long would the city take to build? Musk currently has no answer to this question.
About Starship
First Sustainable City On Mars
Elon Musk also discussed near term potential for Starship and its abilities. Musk talked about how much payload capacity Starship can provide for earth orbital transportation.
One of the interesting elements of Starship is its design. The Starship is designed to increase its reuse.
As per Musk, Starship can fly up to three times per day. That means each Starship can make more than a thousand flights per year.
Musk and Mars
First Sustainable City On Mars
Musk dreams of a future where orbital space is a busy place. Of course, that’s not his only dream. Musk has made several claims regarding his dreams about Mars.
Musk once talked of crewed Mars mission taking place as early as 2024. Yes, that seems impossible to achieve right now, and it most probably is.
In another incident, he entertained the idea of targeting nuclear weapons to detonate just above the planet’s ice caps. The goal was the evaporation of frozen water that would release CO2 and make the planet more habitable for human beings.
So this far, we have a lot of genius and ambitious ideas of Elon Musk and we do hope more will keep coming. Until his next theory comes up, goodbye!
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Wondering about the ideas of Musk. Thanks for making it public.